Third of the series exploring the life of Chief Joseph Brant. For more information, refer to parts one and two on the life of this remarkable figure.
Chief Joseph’s War: Warrior’s Pride
Jeffrey R Gudzune, MA
With the death of Sir William Johnson, a new Northern Superintendent of Indian Affairs was needed. The British government appointed Colonel Guy Johnson, the late Sir William’s son-in-law, a man aptly suited for the task and already acquainted with the Iroquois. Brant was at the first meeting between the leaders of the Six Nations and the crown’s new representative in October of 1774. Colonel Johnson received assurances from the gathered representatives that the Iroquois would respect their original pledge of neutrality and avoid hostilities in the Virginia-Shawnee conflict. This decision was only binding if the Grand Council of the Iroquois agreed. Realizing how important Brant was to his predecessor’s efforts, Johnson dispatched him as an observer to the meeting. The council agreed to stay out of the conflict. However, events within the colonies were now conspiring to undermine their efforts to avoid a war.
Joseph Brant’s record of the proceedings of the Grand Council of the Iroquois demonstrated that the young Mohawk was not only reliable but also aptly suited to the task of representing his people to the British establishment. Brant became personal secretary to Colonel Johnson, performing various administrative as well as diplomatic functions on his behalf. As with the previous Johnson, Brant served as chief interpreter to the colonel in his dealings with the various nations of the Iroquois. The year 1776 found Joseph Brant in the ascendancy. That year, partially through the machinations of Colonel Johnson, Brant became Principal War Chief of the Mohawk Nation. This position also afforded him an appointment as a Captain in the British Army—thus opening the door to British society.
When tensions between the American colonies and Great Britain finally exploded into all out rebellion in 1776, the Iroquois were placed in a perplexing situation. At a special council meeting in Albany in 1776, the Iroquois decided that the coming struggle would be an internal quarrel between the British and the Americans; although many expressed their doubts as to the longevity of this neutrality. For Chief Joseph, an American victory would mean the usurpation of Iroquois territories and would perhaps sound the death knell for the Six Nations. He expressed his views not only to his Iroquois brothers, but to the British government as well.
Invited to travel with Johnson to England, Chief Joseph Brant was presented at the court of King George III. Unlike the others who were present at this meeting, Chief Joseph refused to bow before the king. For Brant, considered among his own people as a prince, it would not be proper for him to bow before a foreign ruler. However, Brant offered, “I will shake you hand.” Intrigued, the British monarch offered his hand to the Mohawk warrior standing before him. While in England, Brant was invited to a production of Romeo and Juliet—a play he thought well acted but unrealistic in its romantic expressions. The talk of London, Chief Joseph attended dinner parties, sat for portraits by popular English artists, and was even made a member of the Masonic order (his degree was actually handed to him by King George III). While the Iroquois council debated involvement in the American rebellion, Brant made his way back to North America in time to see a country in uproar.
Publicly denouncing the council’s decision to remain neutral, Brant began to encourage young Iroquois warriors to enlist in the British army. He maintained that the only way to preserve Iroquois land was to side with the British. Fighting in the British army, with a rapidly growing number of young Iroquois recruits, Chief Joseph fought the colonists with determination, always believing that he was doing what was right for his people. He led his forces in over two-dozen engagements, never wavering in his determination to end the quest for American independence. Throughout 1778, Brant and his sister, Molly, traversed Iroquois territory in an effort to convince other nations to break their neutrality and support the British. Molly proved just as effective as her brother in convincing the Seneca, Cayuga, and Onondaga to join the British side. The news of the Indian alliance with the British infuriated the colonists and resulted in an exaggerated campaign to vilify any native who chose to side with the crown. Brant himself was labeled a “monster,” and depicted as a savage who murdered wounded American soldiers—untrue, but destructive nonetheless. In fact, Brant went out of his way to avoid senseless bloodshed and even saved the life of an American soldier who was incidentally also a Mason. When his army of volunteer Iroquois did raid villages, they made sure that women and children were safely away from the buildings they destroyed. The American forces were not so kind. The retaliatory strikes into Iroquois territory devastated villages and storehouses loaded with food gathered for the winter.
1778 and 1779 saw a series of attacks and counterattacks that raised towns, destroyed food supplies, and turned out innocent civilians. Fear led to hatred on both sides and what was once mere propaganda exploded into reality with massacres of the innocent on both sides.
With his forces running amuck in the Mohawk River Valley, Brant turned his attention to the two nations that had allied with the Americans—the Oneida and Tuscarora. By the winter of 1779, the war had been brought to the Iroquois Confederacy and American General Sullivan happily reported to the Continental Congress, “ there is not a single town left in the country of the Five Nations.” This scorched-earth campaign was an effort to bring the Iroquois to heel—it failed. The only thing the Sullivan campaign accomplished was to raise the ire of the Iroquois warriors in the field. Striking back in a series of raids throughout the borderlands of New York and Pennsylvania, Brant and his volunteer army fought the exhausted, but determined, Americans to a stalemate. When Cornwallis surrendered his army, Brant did not give up. Traveling to Detroit, Chief Joseph engaged an American division under Clark and forced the Americans to abandon their position at Fort Stanwix and reclaim some lost territory. This victory was short lived, however. With the Treaty of Paris, all Indian land west of the Mississippi was ceded to the United States. The Iroquois were abandoned. Brant took this slight as a personal affront and when American commissioners arrived at Fort Stanwix to discuss terms of peace with the Iroquois, he stormed out. The American representatives promised to give the Iroquois only a fraction of their former territory and relegate them to dependency. Beaten and divided as a result of fractious warfare, the Iroquois chiefs agreed to the terms of the treaty and ceded much of their heritage. The war was over for all but Chief Joseph Brant.
Seeing their traditional lands usurped by the Americans, the Mohawk eventually resettled at the Grand River reservation in southern Canada, through the machinations of Chief Joseph Brant. He spent the remaining years of his life working to establish a nation Indian sovereignty, even venturing into the United States in an effort to rally tribal leaders at a grand council of nations. At this meeting, Brant convinced ten nations to sign a declaration addressed to the U.S. Congress, demanding the return of their territories. The effort was ignored by the American government and Brant returned to the Mohawk reservation in Canada where he died in 1807. He has been called a monster, but in reality Joseph Brant was patriot. He saw the dangers of an independent America and realized the only way to preserve Iroquois territory would be to fight with them in order to maintain the relationship that had been established. He was not the bloodthirsty savage that he was vilified as, that was the construct of the American war machine. He spent his life protecting his people and preserving their dignity. For that, Chief Joseph Brant will always be remembered as a true patriot.
Bibliography
Fred Anderson, The War That Made America (New York: Penguin Books, 2005).
Mark M. Boatner III, Encyclopedia of the American Revolution (Mechanicsburgh: Stackpole Books, 1994).
Gary B Nash, The Unknown History of the American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America (New York: Viking Press, 2005).
James L. Stokesbury, A Short History of the American Revolution. (New York: William Morrow, 1991).
